"Dig. Now."

There was no malice in the Turk's voice; he spoke casually, with the same tone he would use to ask her the time of day. To Euterpe, though, his words were like acid—as cold and clear as a glass of water, and yet the moment they hit her, they began to burn. She turned her eyes downward, to the shovel thrust into the mud before her. Kuru's words smouldered within her mind, eating away at her soul—or, at least, what little was left of it.

In the past year, she'd endured ordeals at the hands of this man no woman should have to endure. Euterpe had wanted nothing more than to please the Turk, yet in turn, he'd allowed others to use her as they pleased. She had suffered embarrassments, indignities, and worse still, all for the sake of the man who now ordered her to dig, and she had no illusions about what she was digging, nor who would occupy it.

"I gave you... everything..." she whispered, raising her head to the man who she'd though of as both a father and lover. He towered over her, an imposing figure in black silhouetted against the storm-cast sky, unmoving and unmoved.

"I said. Dig," the Turk repeated, waving the barrel of the revolver he held at her. The last hint of emotion was gone from his tone now, replaced with a strange lull; a cold indifference. It wasn't the first time Kuru had retired a model—the Turk done this twice before, and he'd come to find a kind of pleasure in it. To take their lives in his hands, and then squeeze... it was intoxicating, a heady, addictive sensation of perverse power unlike anything else he'd ever experienced. Perhaps that was the reason he'd chosen tonight to drag Euterpe out into the rain; a shovel in one hand, a revolver in the other, until she stood before the twin mounds that had once been her predecessors. He had a new model now, a better, brighter star to take Euterpe's place, as she had once taken the places of Calliope and Sigurd. It was just business, or at least that was what he told himself, yet right now, Kurumuz didn't feel like a businessman—he felt like a god. A dark, cruel god, too terrible and mighty to fear anything from his own pitiable creation.

Tears rolled down Euterpe's cheeks, indistinguishable from the countless raindrops that preceded them. With a heaving sob, she took up the shovel and drove it into the mud. The Turk watched her work with grim approval. With every scoop of dirt she shoveled, her heart grew heavier, until the weight of it felt too much to bear—yet no matter how heavy it grew, she couldn't stop digging. Her body moved on it's own, mindlessly throwing back scoop after scoop of dirt as her mind reeled under a relentless assault of thoughts and feelings. They came too quickly to grasp; a deluge of emotions with no time to process. Hurt, fear, betrayal, grief... love, even, for the man that had created her, had raised her, only to toss her aside as if she meant nothing to him. Euterpe's conscious mind was overwhelmed, and so a simpler, more primal part of her stepped in to take control. If she dug, it reasoned, she would live until the next scoop of dirt, and then the next, and the next, and as long as she lived, there was hope, however slim. It was not a conscious hope, nor a real hope; rather, it was the desperate, blind hope known only to those who've no other options. It was a hope born of an alternative too terrible to acknowledge; the tiny, flickering candle one lit merely so they didn't have to watch the darkness close in around them. It was the match they stared into with wonder during a blizzard: too little to keep them warm, but just enough to warm their heart as their body froze.

"Oh, I almost forgot."

Kuru's voice cut through Euterpe's thoughts like a thunderbolt, overpowering the downpour of her shock in a sudden, violent burst. He sneered down at her from the rim of the pit she'd dug for herself, burning the bedraggled, mud-caked figure of her into his memory. He thought back, to the moment of her creation, comparing the wide-eyed and innocent AI she'd once been to the disheveled, broken figure beneath him.

"It's been a year, hasn't it? Happy birthday," he jeered, raising the gun.